DA vs CDC in NSW: Which Approval Pathway Fits Your Renovation?

DA vs CDC in NSW comes down to one question: does your design meet every standard in the State's complying development codes? If it does, a complying development certificate (CDC) is the faster approval. If it does not, or your site is excluded, you need a development application (DA) assessed by council. This guide explains both, what CDC drawings must show, and how to tell which pathway your renovation will take.

The two pathways in one paragraph each

A development application is lodged with your local council. Council assesses it against its local environmental plan and development control plan, notifies neighbours, and decides on merit. After consent you still need a construction certificate before building.

A complying development certificate combines planning and construction approval in one step. It is issued by council or a registered certifier when the proposal meets the predetermined standards in the State policy for exempt and complying development. There is no merit assessment. It complies or it does not.

Both are lodged through the NSW Planning Portal.

DA vs CDC in NSW at a glance

When a CDC is possible

Complying development covers a wide range of residential work: new single and two storey houses, alterations and additions, secondary dwellings and some dual occupancies, provided the lot and the design sit inside the code.

The standards are numeric. They cover lot size and width, building height, setbacks from each boundary, floor area, landscaped area, privacy and car parking. The design has to meet all of them. Missing a side setback by a small margin is enough to rule the pathway out.

When you will need a DA

Some sites and some designs cannot use a CDC. The common reasons in Sydney:

• the property is a heritage item, or in a heritage conservation area for most external work
• the land carries a high bushfire attack level
• the lot is too small or too narrow for the code
• the design exceeds a height, setback or floor area standard
• the site has environmental constraints such as foreshore or flood controls
• you want something the code does not contemplate

On the North Shore and Northern Beaches, heritage conservation areas and bushfire mapping push a large share of projects to DA. That is not a bad outcome. It is simply the pathway.

What CDC drawings need to show

The phrase "CDC drawings" gets searched a lot, so here is what a certifier expects. The set is closer to construction documentation than to a concept:

• site plan with boundaries, setbacks, levels and landscaped area calculations
• floor plans, elevations and sections, fully dimensioned
• a compliance table showing each code standard and how the design meets it
• a current detail survey by a registered surveyor
• a BASIX certificate where the work triggers it
• structural engineering
• stormwater drainage design
• specifications and, where relevant, a bushfire assessment

The compliance table is what distinguishes a CDC set. Every number is checked. Preparing that set is the core of our DA and CDC documentation service.

What a DA set needs that a CDC does not

A DA is an argument as well as a set of drawings. Alongside plans, elevations and sections, council expects a statement of environmental effects explaining how the proposal responds to its controls. Depending on the site there may also be shadow diagrams, a heritage impact statement, an arborist report or a landscape plan.

Construction detail comes later, at construction certificate stage. That is why DA drawings alone cannot be built from, a point that catches many owners out.

The honest trade-off

A CDC is faster, and people often bend a design to fit it. Sometimes that is right. Sometimes it produces a worse house: a room made smaller to meet a setback, a window deleted to satisfy a privacy rule that would have been resolved with a screen under a DA.

Our view is that the pathway should follow the design, not lead it. If the best version of your project is a DA, the extra months are usually worth it, because you live with the result for decades. If the compliant version loses nothing that matters to you, take the CDC.

There is also a risk in assuming CDC and finding out late that it does not apply. Checking the site constraints before design starts avoids redrawing.

How to tell which pathway applies to you

1. Order a Section 10.7 planning certificate from council. It lists zoning, heritage, bushfire and other constraints.
2. Check the lot size and width against the relevant code.
3. Sketch the design and test it against the numeric standards.
4. Ask a certifier early if anything is borderline.

Guidance on complying development is published by the NSW Department of Planning. We run these checks at the start of every project, whether it is additions and alterations or a new dual occupancy, so the pathway is known before design time is spent.

Next step

Send your address and a description of the work. We will check the constraints on the site and tell you which pathway applies before any design fee is committed.